BlackBerry Z10 sales estimates cut by 83 percent

The BlackBerry Z10 may be a hot new phone to us, but it may not fly off the shelves as fast as BlackBerry hoped. As BGR reported this morning, sales estimates of the Z10 have rolled back and are now much lower than originally anticipated. In fact, one analyst has cut his estimates back by an astounding 83 percent. Originally, T. Michael Walkley, an analyst from Canaccord Genuity predicted that 1.75 million devices would be sold in the February quarter. But after the phone’s launch in the UK and Canada, Walkley cut his estimates down to just 300,000.

The reason for the dramatic drop? It turns out that BlackBerry’s launch of the phone has rolled out much slower than expected. To boot, public demand for the phone isn’t all that high. Walkley notes that the devices aren’t getting as much support from carriers as it would need to really boost sales.

It’s hard to say if the company will ever really bounce back, but we gotta hand it to it: it’s definitely not going down without a fight. The new devices are truly impressive, and BlackBerry is finally starting to beef up its app store. In fact, according to N4BB, Spotify is soon to enter BlackBerry World. It’s a small step, but shows that the company knows what it needs to do to stay in the game.

Also, having the support of celebrities could help them out, especially in this celeb-obsessed country. Last month, the company brought on Alicia Keys as its Global Creative Director and, as part of her gig there, she just released a video as part of the company’s Keep Moving project.

Will all this help breathe new life into BlackBerry? It’s hard to say, but only time will tell.